Dennis Wingo has a new piece on his blog entitled, “A Singular Suggestion Toward a Radical Idea for Lunar Industrial Development.” With technology advancement continuing in many fields such as robotics, telepresence, autonomous operations, swarms, and augmented and virtual reality, the cost of space exploration and economic development of the Moon, Mars and the rest of the solar system is decreasing.

With this idea in mind, Dennis explains that the first two lunar missions can be robotic, and only the third would involve a human. And only one human would be necessary for the first year.

This approach helps to minimize cost, provide for the most productive relationship between robotic elements, human ingenuity, and the support of the telepresence operators on the Earth, all of whom will be crucial to making this work. At the end of the first year after the first human has done his or her job, other humans should be able to arrive and pick up the burden and reap the rewards. Now this person would not be on the first or even the second mission, but for the sake of brevity, I will only go into the first two missions. Following posts will go beyond that.